- Norman Grindley/Staff Photographer
Hundreds of Adventist Church members marched to the National Heroes Park in Kingston yesterday as part of the Men's Summit. Northern Caribbean University president, Herbert Thompson, told the men in the gathering: 'We have got to be able to get involved in what looks good.'
HUNDREDS OF men flocked the Portmore Seventh-Day Adventist Church in St. Catherine yesterday to participate in the inaugural 'Men's Summit', mounted by the island's Seventh Day Adventist churches.
The event, which is aimed at evoking change in a society plagued with crime and violence, also featured a massive movement of men dubbed: 'The Adventist 10,000 Men March'. The men travelled along several Corporate Area streets, ending at the National Heroes Park, Kingston.
Pastor Eric Nathan, director of the East Jamaica Conference (EJC), in addressing the large gathering in Portmore, sought to solicit the support of the men to educate the youths in an effort to make them realise that "education is the only way to take ourselves out of the quagmire we have found ourselves in."
Pastor Nathan announced that the Seventh-Day Adventist Church would now be making available their churches for the establishment of homework and literacy centres with the assistance of the men in the church whom he urged to commit at least two hours per month to work in these centres.
PRIME MINISTER'S MESSAGE
Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, in a message read to the congregation, commended the Seventh-Day Adventist Church movement on organising the summit and said it was a "perfect opportunity for fathers, husbands and men in general to seize the moment and become real agents of change in our society."
He said this was important especially as the country was undertaking a process of renewal in focusing on the youth in an effort to "consistently provide them with guidance and encouragement in the adolescence and young adulthood periods of their lives.
"This should not only serve to reassure them of our love and support, but help to inculcate in them the desire and determination to achieve in order that they too can make a positive contribution toward the building of a better and brighter future for Jamaica."
Mayor of Kingston, Desmond McKenzie, said it could not have been a better time to launch the summit because there was a need "to inspire the men of our nation to be real men, husbands, fathers and godly men towards a better Jamaica."
